The international community plays a crucial role in empoweiring North Korean defectors. A larger audience listening to their testimonies encourages a bigger scale action to guarantee their fundamental rights. In order to make sure that the voices of North Korean defectors are heard by international organizations, at PSCORE we strive to raise awareness about North Koreans’ human rights violations in the United Nations.

In 2012, the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UNECOSOC) has certified a very respected consultative status to PSCORE. Ever since, PSCORE has been actively participating in the United Nations human rights related sessions. We usually partake in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) organized by the Human Rights Council and cooperate with the Special Reporter and the Commission of Inquiry for Human Rights in North Korea. Further, we participate to the Third Committee of the General Assembly, the Social Humanitarian and Cultural Committee as well.

Human rights reports

In order to prevent the global community from forgetting North Koreans’ voices, PSCORE has decided to inscribe their stories on paper and share them with the world. We collect testimonies and analyze them through human rights’ charters in the way the United Nations Special Reporter works. We have published these reports in Korean, English and French and are willing to translate the next ones in other languages as well to broaden the circle of people supporting the improvement of North Korean people’s human rights.

To make the testimonies even more tangible, we have also set up two projects using Google Maps. The first project (http://pscore.org/xe/Curtis_Melvin) is providing detailed information concerning North Korean labor camps, monuments and other major sites. The second project (http://pscore.org/index_en.php) is documenting human rights abuses in North Korea. The information for this project has been gathered by PSCORE from interviews with North Korean defectors. During the interviews, defectors voluntarily accounted for human rights abuses they have encountered and helped us to locate these incidents using Google Earth. The information shared here is naturally very sensitive and all identifying information has been changed or concealed. What is presented by this second project is only a small, but no less important part of the picture of life and death inside North Korea.

Raising Awareness

Every voice matters to us. In order to reach a wider audience, we hold monthly awareness campaigns in strategic locations to get people’s support and recognition of North Korean people’s human rights. We have organized campaigns at Yonsei University, Yongsan station, Itaewon and Hongdae amongst many other locations. During the campaigns, we aim to inform people about the human rights’ conditions in North Korea, through boards and documentation, gathering signatures for petitions for more recognition in South Korea of the situation in the North and trying to get financial support for our activities. PSCORE has taken advantage of its participation to theUnited Nations to hold some campaigns in Geneva and in New York.

Doing that, we try to diversify our audience as much as possible, as we believe that the ongoing human rights abuses in North Korea should matter to everyone! Through charity Rock concerts, we raise funds for supporting our activities and inform people of North Korea's Human Rights violations.